All of Us: The Collected Poems

  it’s the long-sought treasure right there

  on the tray in front of him.

  She keeps on until his nose begins to bleed

  and it’s then he asks her to stop. Please, baby,

  for Christ’s sake, stop. It may be his plea

  reaches her as a faint signal from another

  galaxy, a dying star, for this is what it is,

  a coded sign from some other time and place

  needling her brain, reminding her of something

  so lost it’s gone forever. In any event, she stops

  hitting him, goes back to her drink. Why

  does she stop? Because she remembers

  the fat years preceding the lean? All that history

  they’d shared, sticking it out together, the two

  of them against the world? No way. If she’d truly

  remembered everything and those years had dropped

  smack into her lap all at once,

  she would’ve killed him on the spot.

  Maybe her arms are tired, that’s why she stops.

  Say she’s tired then. So she stops. He picks up

  his drink almost as if nothing’s happened

  though it has, of course, and his head aches

  and reels with it. She goes back to her whiskey

  without a word, not even so much as the usual

  “bastard” or “son of a bitch.” Dead quiet.

  He’s silent as lice. Holds the drink

  napkin under his nose to catch the blood,

  turns his head slowly to look out.

  Far below, the small steady lights in houses

  up and down some coastal valley. It’s

  the dinner hour down there. People pushing

  up to a full table, grace being said,

  hands joined together under roofs so solid

  they will never blow off those houses—houses where,

  he imagines, decent people live and eat, pray

  and pull together. People who, if they left

  their tables and looked up from the dining

  room windows, could see a harvest moon and,

  just below, like a lighted insect, the dim glow

  of a jetliner. He strains to see over

  the wing and beyond, to the myriad lights

  of the city they are rapidly approaching,

  the place where they live with others of their kind,

  the place they call home.

  He looks around the cabin. Other people,

  that’s all. People like themselves

  in a way, male or female, one sex

  or the other, people not entirely unlike

  themselves—hair, ears, eyes, nose, shoulders,

  genitals—my God, even the clothes they wear

  are similar, and there’s that identifying strap

  around the middle. But he knows he and she

  are not like those others though he’d like it,

  and she too, if they were.

  Blood soaks his napkin. His head rings and rings

  but he can’t answer it. And what would he say

  if he could? I’m sorry they’re not in. They left

  here, and there too, years ago. They tear

  through the thin night air, belted in, bloody husband

  and wife, both so still and pale they could be

  dead. But they’re not, and that’s part of

  the miracle. All this is one more giant step

  into the mysterious experience of their lives.

  Who could have foretold any of it years back when,

  their hands guiding the knife, they made

  that first cut deep into the wedding cake?

  Then the next. Who would have listened?

  Anyone bringing such tidings of the future

  would have been scourged from the gate.

  The plane lifts, then banks sharply. He touches

  her arm. She lets him. She even takes his hand.

  They were made for each other, right? It’s fate.

  They’ll survive. They’ll land and pull themselves

  together, walk away from this awful fix —

  they simply have to, they must.

  There’s lots in store for them yet, so many fierce

  surprises, such exquisite turnings. It’s now

  they have to account for, the blood

  on his collar, the dark smudge of it

  staining her cuff.

  My Wife

  My wife has disappeared along with her clothes.

  She left behind two nylon stockings, and

  a hairbrush overlooked behind the bed.

  I should like to call your attention

  to these shapely nylons, and to the strong

  dark hair caught in the bristles of the brush.

  I drop the nylons into the garbage sack; the brush

  I’ll keep and use. It is only the bed

  that seems strange and impossible to account for.

  Wine

  Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander

  whose rough father, Philip, hired Aristotle to tutor

  the young scion and warrior, to put some polish

  on his smooth shoulders. Alexander who, later

  on the campaign trail into Persia, carried a copy of

  The Iliad in a velvet-lined box, he loved that book so

  much. He loved to fight and drink, too.

  I came to that place in the life where Alexander, after

  a long night of carousing, a wine-drunk (the worst kind of drunk —

  hangovers you don’t forget), threw the first brand

  to start a fire that burned Persepolis, capital of the Persian Empire

  (ancient even in Alexander’s day).

  Razed it right to the ground. Later, of course,

  next morning—maybe even while the fire roared—he was

  remorseful. But nothing like the remorse felt

  the next evening when, during a disagreement that turned ugly

  and, on Alexander’s part, overbearing, his face flushed

  from too many bowls of uncut wine, Alexander rose drunkenly to

  his feet,

  grabbed a spear and drove it through the breast

  of his friend, Cletus, who’d saved his life at Granicus.

  For three days Alexander mourned. Wept. Refused food. “Refused

  to see to his bodily needs.” He even promised

  to give up wine forever.

  (I’ve heard such promises and the lamentations that go with them.)

  Needless to say, life for the army came to a full stop

  as Alexander gave himself over to his grief.

  But at the end of those three days, the fearsome heat

  beginning to take its toll on the body of his dead friend,

  Alexander was persuaded to take action. Pulling himself together

  and leaving his tent, he took out his copy of Homer, untied it,

  began to turn the pages. Finally he gave orders that the funeral

  rites described for Patroklos be followed to the letter:

  he wanted Cletus to have the biggest possible send-off.

  And when the pyre was burning and the bowls of wine were

  passed his way during the ceremony? Of course, what do you

  think? Alexander drank his fill and passed

  out. He had to be carried to his tent. He had to be lifted, to be put

  into his bed.

  After the Fire

  The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one

  whose cap had been burnt, walked in. He sat down and

  listened. Then he, too, began to reminisce and tell stories.

  Nikolay, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down,

  listened and asked questions about the dishes

  that were prepared for the gentry in the old days.

  They talked about chops, cutlets, various soups and sauces
, and

  the cook, who remembered everything very well, mentioned dishes

  that were no longer prepared; there was one, for instance—a dish

  made of bulls’ eyes, that was called “waking up

  in the morning.”

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “Peasants”

  III

  What lasts is what you start with.

  — CHARLES WRIGHT

  from A Journal of Southern Rivers

  The Kitchen

  At Sportsmen’s Park, near Yakima, I crammed a hook

  with worms, then cast it toward the middle

  of the pond, hoping for bass. Bullfrogs scraped the air

  invisibly. A turtle, flapjack-sized, slid

  from a lily pad while another pulled itself onto

  the same pad, a little staging area. Blue sky, warm

  afternoon. I pushed a forked branch

  into the sandy bank, rested the pole in the fork,

  watched the bobber for a while, then beat off.

  Grew sleepy then and let my eyes close.

  Maybe I dreamed. I did that back then. When

  suddenly, in my sleep, I heard a plop, and my eyes

  flew open. My pole was gone!

  I saw it tearing a furrow through

  the scummy water. The bobber appeared, then

  disappeared, then showed itself once more

  skimming the surface, then gone under again.

  What could I do? I bellowed, and bellowed some more.

  Began to run along the bank, swearing to God

  I would not touch myself again if He’d let me

  retrieve that pole, that fish. Of course

  there was no answer, not a sign.

  I hung around the pond a long time

  (the same pond that’d take my friend a year later),

  once in a while catching a glimpse of my bobber,

  now here, now there. Shadows grew fat

  and dropped from trees into the pond. Finally

  it was dark, and I biked home.

  My dad was drunk

  and in the kitchen with a woman not his wife, nor

  my mother either. This woman was, I swear, sitting

  on his lap, drinking a beer. A woman

  with part of a front tooth

  missing. She tried to grin as she rose

  to her feet. My dad stayed where he was, staring at me

  as if he didn’t recognize his own get. Here,

  what is it, boy? he said. What happened,

  son? Swaying against the sink, the woman wet her lips

  and waited for whatever was to happen next.

  My dad waited too, there in his old place

  at the kitchen table, the bulge in his pants

  subsiding. We all waited and wondered

  at the stuttered syllables, the words made to cling

  as anguish that poured from my raw young mouth.

  Songs in the Distance

  Because it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern

  and made a soup of the herring head. At midday

  they sat down to have tea and went on drinking it until

  they were all perspiring: they looked actually swollen with

  tea; and then they attacked the soup, all helping themselves

  out of one pot. The herring itself Granny hid away.

  In the evening a potter was firing pots on the slope. Down

  below in the meadow the girls got up a round dance

  and sang songs … and in the distance the singing sounded soft

  and melodious. In and about the tavern the peasants were

  making a racket. They sang with drunken voices, discordantly,

  and swore at one another.… And the girls and children listened

  to the swearing without turning a hair; it was evident

  that they had been used to it from their cradles.

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “Peasants”

  Suspenders

  Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and

  I was going to have to wear suspenders to school

  next day. Nobody wore suspenders to second grade,

  or any other grade for that matter. She said,

  You’ll wear them or else I’ll use them on you. I don’t

  want any more trouble. My dad said something then. He

  was in the bed that took up most of the room in the cabin

  where we lived. He asked if we could be quiet and settle this

  in the morning. Didn’t he have to go in early to work in

  the morning? He asked if I’d bring him

  a glass of water. It’s all that whiskey he drank, Mom said. He’s

  dehydrated.

  I went to the sink and, I don’t know why, brought him

  a glass of soapy dishwater. He drank it and said, That sure

  tasted funny, son. Where’d this water come from?

  Out of the sink, I said.

  I thought you loved your dad, Mom said.

  I do, I do, I said, and went over to the sink and dipped a glass

  into the soapy water and drank off two glasses just

  to show them. I love Dad, I said.

  Still, I thought I was going to be sick then and there. Mom said,

  I’d be ashamed of myself if I was you. I can’t believe you’d

  do your dad that way. And, by God, you’re going to wear those

  suspenders tomorrow, or else. I’ll snatch you bald-headed if you

  give me any trouble in the morning. I don’t want to wear

  suspenders,

  I said. You’re going to wear suspenders, she said. And with that

  she took the suspenders and began to whip me around the bare legs

  while I danced in the room and cried. My dad

  yelled at us to stop, for God’s sake, stop. His head was killing him,

  and he was sick at his stomach from soapy dishwater

  besides. That’s thanks to this one, Mom said. It was then somebody

  began to pound on the wall of the cabin next to ours. At first it

  sounded like it was a fist—boom-boom-boom—and then

  whoever it was switched to a mop or a broom

  handle. For Christ’s sake, go to bed over there! somebody yelled.

  Knock it off! And we did. We turned out the lights and

  got into our beds and became quiet. The quiet that comes to a house

  where nobody can sleep.

  What You Need to Know for Fishing

  The angler’s coat and trowsers should be of cloth,

  not too thick and heavy, for if they be the sooner wet

  they will be the sooner dry. Water-proof velveteens,

  fustians, and mole-skins—rat catcher’s costume —

  ought never to be worn by the angler for if

  he should have to swim a mile or two on any occasion

  he would find them a serious weight once thoroughly

  saturated with water. And should he have a stone

  of fish in his creel, it would be safest not to make

  the attempt. An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance

  suggests the propriety of anglers wearing cork jackets

  which, if strapped under the shoulders, would enable

  the wearer to visit any part of a lake where,

  in warm weather, with an umbrella over his head,

  he might enjoy his sport, cool and comfortable, as if

  “in a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.”

  This same gentleman thinks that a bottle of Reading sauce,

  a box of “peptic pills,” and a portable frying-pan

  ought to form part of every angler’s travelling equipage.

  — STEPHEN OLIVER

  from Scenes and Recollections of Fly Fishing in Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland (1834)

  Oyntment to Alure Fish to the Bait

  Take Mans Fat and Cats F
at, of each half an Ounce;

  Mummy finely poudred, three Drams; Cummin-seed

  finely poudred, one Dram; distilled Oyl of Annise

  and Spike, of each six Drops; Civet two Grains,

  and Camphir four Grains. Make an Oyntment.

  When you Angle, annoint eight Inches of the Line

  next the Hook therewith, and keep it in

  a pewter Box. When you use this Oyntment

  never Angle with less than three hairs next Hook

  because if you Angle with but one hair

  it will not stick on. Take the Bones or Scull

  of a Dead-man, at the opening of a Grave,

  and beat the same into pouder, and put this pouder

  in the Moss wherein you keep your worms. But

  others like Grave-earth as well. Now

  go find your water.

  — JAMES CHETHAM

  from The Angler’s Vade Mecum (1681)

  The Sturgeon

  Narrow-bodied, iron head like the flat side

  of a lance,

  mouth underneath,

  the sturgeon is a bottom-feeder

  and can’t see well.

  Mosslike feelers hang down over

  the slumbrous lips,

  and its dorsal fins and plated backbone

  mark it out

  something left over from another world.

  The sturgeon

  lives alone, confines itself

  to large, freshwater rivers, and takes

  100 years getting around to its first mating.

  Once with my father

  at the Central Washington State Fair

  I saw a sturgeon that weighed 900 pounds

  winched up in a corner

  of the Agricultural Exhibit Building.

  I will not forget that.

  A card gave the name in italics,

  also a sketch, as they say,

  of its biography —

  which my father read

  and then read aloud.

  The largest are netted

  in the Don River

  somewhere in Russia.

  These are called White Sturgeon

  and no one can be sure

  just how large they are.

  The next biggest ones recorded